strewed around on the floor of the
place, but nothing like a collection.

I could go on like that, and take him up on a lot more details. But it
sounds as if I were criticising. And I don't mean it that way, because I
believe the man is doing his best. But I do think he ought to get out
another edition of his book, and set these points straight.

He puts a little poem on his title page:

Go, little book, God send thee good passage,
And specially let this be thy prayer
Unto them all that thee will read or hear,
Where thou art wrong, after their help to call,
Thee to correct in any part or all.

That sounds fair enough. So I am going to send him these notes. But it
isn't in "parts" he is "wrong." There is a big mistake somewhere.

GOLDEN LADS

"Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust."

THE PLAY-BOYS OF BRITTANY

LES FUSILIERS MARINS

At times in my five months at the front I have been puzzled by the
sacrifice of so much young life; and most I have wondered about the
Belgians. I had seen their first army wiped out; there came a time when
I no longer met the faces I had learned to know at Termonde and Antwerp
and Alost. A new army of boys has dug itself in at the Yser, and the
same wastage by gun-fire and disease is at work on them. One wonders
with the Belgians if the price they pay for honor is not too high. There
is a sadness in the eyes of Belgian boy soldiers that is not easy to
face. Are we quite worthy of their sacrifice? Why should the son of
Ysaye die for me? Are you, comfortable reader, altogether sure that
Pierre Depage and Andre Simont are called on to spill their blood for
your good name?

Then one turns with relief to the Fusiliers Marins--the sailors with a
rifle. Here are young men at play. They know they are the incomparable
soldiers. The guns have been on them for fifteen months, but they remain
unbroken. Twice in the year, if they had yielded, this might have been a
short war. But that is only saying that if Brittany had a different
breed of men the world and its future would contain less hope. They
carry the fine liquor of France, and something of their own added for
bouquet. They are happy soldiers--happy in their brief life, with its
flash of daring, and happy in their death. It is still sweet to die for
one's country, and that at no far-flung outpost over the seas and sands,
but just at the home border. As we carried our wounded sai